


A Link to the Beginning

by raisedbymoogles



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Adventure, F/F, Genderswap, Romance, swordswoman princess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 04:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6641989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisedbymoogles/pseuds/raisedbymoogles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A princess is a fearsome thing, but for a girl raised by fairies, Princess Zelda is only the beginning of an adventure that will change her forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Link to the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Are You Game? December 2015. Borrows heavily from Ocarina of Time, but this is basically set in its own continuity.

The first time Link sees a sword, it’s in the hands of a princess.

She’s only barely aware of what ‘princess’ means at the time, but the threat - shoulders back, feet braced, length of shining steel steady in the stranger’s hands - is undeniable. She loses moments (maybe hours) just staring, unable to take the whole of the stranger in - so much detail in her clothing alone! - until the princess steps forward and snaps an order and Link obediently lets her slingshot fall from her hand.

Thus, the beginning.

*

“My name is Zelda,” the princess says to the Great Fairy. “Princess of Hyrule.”

Link sits by the edge of the sacred pool and listens without any real expectation of understanding. The fairies who raised her have told her stories of the realm of _big people,_ of their cities and their farms and their royal families, but little of it has anything to do with Link and her life among the forest dwellers, and so it never held her interest for long.

And so she is shocked when the Princess tells a tale of terror, loss and exile that - doesn’t exactly _match_ her earliest memories, because nothing will ever do that, but echoes them deeply. It’s enough to make her heart break for the stranger in the long, ornate dress - which she can see now is torn, dirtied and ruined from her desperate flight. Her long hair, honeyed gilt over brown, is tangled and singed at the ends. What bare skin Link can see is scratched; there is a bruise on her cheek.

Noticing makes the princess no less glorious than when she held a sword on Link in the forest glade.

“Events are being set in motion,” the Great Fairy says, and the heavy sorrow in her voice makes Link’s heart twist in sympathy and worry. “Your coming heralds a time of great healing, or great ruin, Princess.”

“Tell me how I can make it the former,” the Princess demands, and her voice does not shake at all.

The Great Fairy smiles. And then she turns to Link.

“My dear one - stand up. This destiny is yours as well. The time has come for you to leave our forest and return to the world as its savior.”

Link scrambles to her feet, unable to hide her shock - an echo of the shock on the face of Princess Zelda.

*

The Great Fairy gives them both gifts before they go. A shield for Zelda, a magic rod for Link, a series of maps, sturdy clothes and boots for the pair of them. Zelda looks odd in trousers and tunic, with her hair bound up, but her manner is no less commanding. Link cannot linger for long against her impatience, saying only a few goodbyes to her family before she turns to follow the Princess. A fairy slips into her tunic and clings there, chiming cheekily. Link is sure she’ll find other stowaways if she stops to check her pack and shake her clothes. She doesn’t bother to do so.

The Princess - she says _call me Zelda, if we’re to be traveling companions_ \- is full of words like a fountain is full of water. Link wonders if all Strangers are as talkative as her, and how she’ll possibly live among them if they are. As it is she struggles to keep up with Zelda’s quickness with words, even as she outpaces the Princess on the road. “I’ve trained as a warrior,” Zelda insists, aggrieved. “Was all my training not enough? How is a commoner besting me so easily?”

Link turns back to her and shrugs apologetically. _I am who I’ve always been - part of this forest, down to my blood and bone. I’ve walked to one end to the other and back since I could stand on my own._ The thought floats through her mind without words binding it into shape, just a fleeting feeling she couldn’t have begun to articulate the way Zelda articulates everything.

She’s just wondering whether she should try anyway when Zelda’s eyes widen. “Move!” she roars, and lunges sword-first. Link yelps and dives to one side - and Zelda cuts down the goblin that had leaped out behind her.

Zelda may not have the stamina of a forest child, but she swings the sword with a grace and skill that leaves Link in awe. As the first goblin falls she plants her foot and spins, shield high to block the club of a second just emerging from the underbrush. She forces it back with a lunge, reverses her swing and knocks it down, pinning it there with the point of her blade.

“Surrender,” she commands. “Tell me who sent you!”

The goblin bares its teeth in response and lobs something hard and dark brown. It hits the ground with a crack and a flash of light that blinds them both. When their eyes clear, the goblin is gone.

“A - what?” Zelda demands once they’ve regrouped and their eyes have stopped smarting. “A deku nut? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

Link shrugs helplessly. There are stranger things than deku nuts in this forest, and stranger things still in the world beyond it - things like swords, and destinies, and princesses.

*

Their first Temple is crumbling with age, covered with vines, and quite literally crawling with spiders of all sizes. Zelda can’t quite stifle a shriek at the sight of her first Skulltula descending from the ceiling, but after that she cuts through the scuttling horrors with a grim set to her brows under her diadem. Link trails after, futilely waving her magic rod about until - quite by accident - she finds the right door to wave it at and it opens.

“Oh,” Zelda grins, as the monsters behind the door rouse themselves. “That’s useful.” Link shakes her head, stops staring in bewilderment at the Great Fairy’s gift and braces herself as Zelda draws her sword.

Zelda is a fearsome fighter - not that Link has any standard of comparison, but she rips through the monstrous spiders and cunning goblins with seeming ease, keeping their attention well on her while Link climbs vines, flips switches, and waves her magic rod around in the hopes of opening more doors. Through repeated experimentation she figures out the relationship between her rod and the three-triangles symbol carved into the stone above the doors and other mechanisms that reacted to it: namely, that there _is_ one in the first place.

Other doors require keys. One door requires a big, rather evil-looking key with horns on it. Behind it is a spider the size of a carriage.

Zelda mutters a curse under her breath, and charges.

The light filtering in through the room’s high windows is almost gone by the time the spider is dead. As its body, hacked into several pieces, dissolves into nothing, the spirit of the temple gives them gifts: new strength, a new spell for Link’s rod, a strange flat piece of wood Zelda calls a boomerang. Link takes her cue from Zelda and accepts them solemnly.

Silence falls as the spirit departs. Zelda sheaths her sword and takes a deep breath.

_“EEEEWWWW! Ew ew ew EW! I hope I never see another spider again as long as I live, that was the grossest most horrible thing I have ever had to do!”_

…well.

*

It’s not that there are _fewer_ spiders, the further out Zelda and Link journey. It’s more that the spiders are joined by so many other horrors - ghosts, walking skeletons, stone golems, and eyeless, screaming corpses, just to name a few - that the spiders start to seem ordinary by comparison. They’re easy to deal with from far away using the boomerang or, later, the hookshot or the fairy bow. Zelda doesn’t shriek after every temple monster, after that first one, but Link can see how her hands tremble now and then, and tries to go slower for her sake.

Tries, but - by Zelda’s implacable will - fails.

“This symbol is everywhere,” she muses, placing a hand on the altar where yet another triple-triangle sigil has been carved in the heart of yet another temple. Link, tracing glittering trails of fire and (her new spell) ice in the air with her magic rod, listens with half an ear. “Come to think of it, there were a few tapestries in the palace with this symbol on it somewhere. I wonder…”

Link turns back to her, but Zelda is lost in thought, her hair falling out of its knot to spill over her face. She doesn’t need to see the princess’s face to know her expression - a little lost, a little lonely, very solemn in an almost-effective attempt to hide her heart.

Link lowers her rod, comes forward and - holding her breath - puts her hand over Zelda’s on the altar.

It’s the first time they’ve really touched. Or perhaps it’s the altar that does it - there is light, and sourceless chiming, and a voice that sings in their very hearts of wordless joy and longing. The triple-triangle sigil glows on the backs of their hands.

“Oh,” Zelda gasps. “That - so that’s what this is.”

_The Triforce._

*

There are many legends about the Triforce. Everyone they meet, from itinerant merchants to strange river-people to gigantic talking boulders, has heard at least two or three. Zelda talks to all of them with renewed energy while Link carefully doles out their rupees for arrows and provisions. What the two of them might have to do with ancient goddesses and the very foundations of existence is beyond her; Zelda is the one who hears ‘prophecy’ and acts like it actually _means_ something.

And it is Zelda who puts the pieces together, in the sands outside the Temple of Light.

“Three pieces,” she says, drawing a crude Triforce in the sand with a stick. “Three people to hold them. But one of the pieces has been - wrong for a long time. We are two pieces of the Triforce - wisdom,” she draws a line from one of the triangle-points to herself, “and courage.” Another line, from the second point to Link.

Link frowns at the line leading to her. Taking her rod, she draws a third line out from the last remaining point, and taps at the end of it.

“I think I know who it is,” Zelda admits, and looks into Link’s eyes, and Link is shocked at the worry and fear on naked display. “And if I’m correct, we will find no help from our third member - the holder of the Triforce of Power is Ganondorf, the woman who usurped my father’s throne.”

Link lets her rod drift back to her side. The wind picks up, scouring the sand clean of the Triforce and leaving utterly nothing behind.

Restoring the balance of nature may be harder than Link thought.

*

Link thinks Zelda’s castle is another temple at first - a fearsome one indeed, covered in metal spurs and a fearsome miasma. Zelda gasps with fury at the sight of it. “How _dare_ she!” she cries. “That’s my _home!”_

Her voice breaks a bit at the end, but Link pretends not to notice.

Their first attempt to enter the castle fails spectacularly. The guards aren’t stupid, and remember to look down once in a while. Their quest might have ended in the dungeon or worse, but Zelda thinks to free the horses and cause a stampede in the bailey. Link grabs one of them as it passes, though the flying hooves and flashing teeth are _terrifying,_ and it carries both girls across Hyrule Field to safety.

“Epona,” Zelda names her, once they’re safe by the shores of Lake Hylia. Epona whuffles her cheek before dropping her huge head to nibble at the grass along the bank. “Link, here,” Zelda invites, offering a hand.

Link sidles closer, and Zelda takes her hand and holds it while she teaches her how to stroke Epona’s strong neck and coarse mane. Link closes her eyes to feel the muscle under the sleek fur, the warmth and solidity of her, and this time she doesn’t flinch when she gets a faceful of horsey breath and velvety muzzle.

“I think she likes you!” Zelda whispers excitedly. “Epona, will you help us free Hyrule from Ganondorf?”

Epona whickers, liquid eyes flickering closed in pleasure as Link strokes her muzzle.

*

They sleep by Lake Hylia’s shores that night, snuggled up together with Epona’s warm bulk providing shelter. Zelda’s asleep in an instant, but Link stays awake, peeking through her lashes at the girl who fell into her world and turned it upside down.

They’ve come so far.

Zelda has calluses on her hands that she didn’t have before, despite the strength-enhancing gloves she now wears. She keeps her hair ruthlessly pulled back, seemingly unconcerned with the couple of scars she’s picked up from her many battles that a curtain of long hair might help to hide. She’s still as full of words as a fountain is full of water, but she’s also filled with a quiet strength and a strange wisdom, and Link wonders if that has always been there and she just didn’t see it at first, or if the journey has changed Zelda as it has changed Link. What sort of princess will she be when she’s won back her castle? Will she return to her dresses and silk gloves and heavy crown? Or will she long for the road under her feet, the sunshine and wind in her hair? Will she wear trousers and carry her shield on her arm?

Zelda hums and mutters in her sleep, and Link dares a careful stroke over honey-brown hair. Zelda quiets at the touch - even asleep, trusting Link to watch her back.

Link smiles and settles in, listening to Zelda breathe and Epona snore. Somehow, as far from home as she’s ever been, she feels warm and safe and _right,_ as if she’s finally found where she belongs.

*

Nothing could have prepared them for the reality of Ganondorf’s Hyrule Castle, and of Power arrayed against its siblings. 

Epona is a wonder: unmatched in power and speed in all the land, Zelda and Link would swear to it. Zelda has the reins, guiding Epona to thunder over the barricades blocking their way, while Link fires arrow after arrow from behind her. Since their first attempt, Ganondorf has replaced her human guards with toothy reptilian monsters - faster and more vicious, but also a relief to both of the Triforce girls. These guards, Link does not hesitate to aim her arrows at, or rain fire down on when her arrows run out. Zelda rides on and doesn’t look back.

The castle’s been transformed on the inside too. Zelda bars the doors against Ganondorf’s reptilian shock troops and turns to face it, lips pressed together and eyes narrowed as she takes in the knotted mess the bearer of Power has made of her home.

Link lays a hand on her arm, and the Princess nods. “I’m all right. Let’s go.”

They take a step forward together, and the first of many nightmares descends upon them.

Ganondorf’s power manifests as a monstrous phantom, taking the form of - Zelda’s voice strangles on a curse - a spider the size of a _house._ Now they see that the monsters they’ve faced and cut down one by one were but shadows sent out by their enemy, who keeps all power clenched in her grasping hands - Ganondorf, always Ganondorf they fought. The spirits cry out through Link’s voice as she lifts her rod, summoning fire with all her strength. The phantom spider’s webs crisp and it plummets to the floor, legs flailing, and Zelda’s sword is ready.

It dies in a wash of cold phantom ichor, and this time Zelda does not shriek. There is more work to do.

Floor by floor, they ascend. They fight, they fall, they fight again. A massive phantom boar throws them off a balcony into a separate wing of the castle; a pair of snakes do their best to crush them; a dragon nearly proves its fire superior to Link’s. Zelda is the one who guides them from encounter to encounter, finding her way despite how Ganondorf’s twisted her childhood home. Link’s fairy family help where they can, but their strength is quickly exhausted. By the time they get to the throne room at the top of the castle, only one is left to determinedly cling to Link’s collar.

Zelda pauses before the door and takes a deep breath. “I fled in terror from this woman when she first came,” she murmurs. “I was scared and angry when I met you in the forest. I don’t think I ever apologized for how I treated you.”

Link bumps her shoulder against Zelda’s gently. _Come on, we’re way past that. It’s okay. I love you._

That last thought startles Link, but Zelda’s already smiling tightly and pushing the door open, and Link can only follow.

*

Ganondorf laughs at them. _Two small girls, is this all that’s left in the world to challenge me? Put that stick down before you hurt yourself, my girl._

Link sets her shoes on fire. Ganondorf slams her into the far wall with a roar, without even touching her. Zelda shouts a challenge and leaps forward to shield Link while Link’s still blinking the stars out of her eyes, and the final battle begins in earnest.

Queen Ganondorf wears power like a cloak, or perhaps the power wears her, the way her image wavers in the air when she casts her fearsome spells. Zelda weaves and dodges, winged shoes making her all but fly, agile and powerful as she hammers at Ganondorf’s defenses again and again. Link’s magic envelops her in the fiercest love Link and the spirits can call down, making the Princess glow golden against the darkness of the throne room, making her sword sing as she cracks Ganondorf’s shield of power.

It’s almost enough.

Ganondorf flings out her arms. The walls boom and crumble and Zelda is flung back, grunting as she lands on her feet. Link grabs her arm before she charges again, for although Ganondorf is as exhausted and seething as they are, _something is happening._ The walls don’t so much crumble away as dissolve, and what lies behind is a sky full of _nothing,_ only a swirling, maddening darkness.

This is the Triforce of Power, corrupted beyond all recognition by generation after generation of human avarice and pride. And Ganondorf is - no longer human. Or perhaps she is, and the monstrous form that menaces them now is a facet of human nature distilled down to its horrid essence.

The monster Ganon rakes reality with her claws, and Wisdom and Courage fall.

Link is barely breathing when a tiny, cool hand touches her cheek. _The last fairy,_ she realizes. _She’ll heal me._

She’s weaponless, powerless, and broken in every part of her body. The pain is excruciating, debilitating, _everything_. All she has to do is let the fairy heal her, and she could stand again, maybe find a way to do what the spirits have asked of her and restore nature’s balance. She could do it. She could end it all and go home.

“Go to Zelda,” she whispers, and the fairy is gone.

Zelda comes awake shrieking Link’s name, but Link can barely hear it. Ganon laughs - the creature has no more words, but her pleasure in Zelda’s anguish and Link’s brokenness is plain. For a while all Link can hear is the clash of steel and claws, Zelda’s cries of defiance, Ganon’s long and horrible roar.

_She can’t do it alone._

Somehow the magic rod is bumping against Link’s knuckles. She uncurls her fingers, grasps it weakly. It sings in the back of her mind, the part of her that is just awakening as the Legendary Hero.

_Get up, brave one. We will lend you strength. Courage must stand by Wisdom._

Link opens her eyes, sucking in a breath that’s miraculously free of pain. Every movement still aches, but she _can_ move, and that is enough. The spirits of the temples flood her awareness, singing her their strength and healing, lending a pale green glow to her rod that shouts back Ganon’s darkness, that fills a flagging Zelda with new strength and makes Ganon herself flinch.

When the glow fades, Link finds herself with an arrow in her hands. An arrow made of light.

For the first time Ganon shows fear as Link nocks the arrow. The monster charges, but Zelda gets in her way, slashing at her hands and ankles and spinning her around in a fury. Link pulls back, every sense locked on her target, steady as the foundations of the earth itself until Zelda shouts, _”Now!”_

Link lets loose, and Ganon screams her defiance as the Arrow of Light hits home, right in the middle of the upside-down Triforce emblem marked on her chest.

The nightmare-world Ganon created begins to dissolve away, like ink disappearing in a wash of cold, clear water. Link staggers to one knee, exhausted but whole as the spirits leave her, and watches as Zelda grimly completes the work, striking Ganon’s head from her body. The beast falls, and the stone floor that receives the body is that of Zelda’s Hyrule Castle: hard-done-by from Ganondorf’s manipulations, but whole and strong and no longer twisted out of true. Zelda sinks to one knee, gasping, drenched in sweat as the hand that holds her sword trembles.

_“Princess!”_

People - ordinary people - flood through the doors, and Link gropes for the magic rod again on instinct until Zelda calls, “Chancellor!” and greets the old man who kneels by her side with a hug. “Oh, it’s so good to see you well! I feared the worst - oh, and Captain - thank the goddesses-”

Link’s vision begins to gray out at the edges. Before consciousness slips away, she hears Zelda order, “Take her to the mending wing. Tell them - tell them to treat her with all honor. She is my Hero.”

*

The castle is no easier to navigate now than it was when Ganondorf held it, but everywhere Link goes people are happy to help her, even eager. Some of them even bow, which fills Link with consernation.

She tried to bow to the Princess once, the first time she saw Zelda again in her dress with her hair loose behind her. She’d gotten as far as a half-bow, her heart in sorrowful knots, before Zelda flung her arms around Link, arresting the motion.

“You, of all people,” she whispered fiercely, “are my equal. Now get back in bed, you silly goose, or Nurse will scold us both.” Smiling helplessly, Link had obeyed.

Hyrule is, by all reports, settling down nicely after Ganondorf’s defeat. No more lantern-wielding ghosts on the endless plains, nor walking dead in the towns. The air is clear, the water bright and clean. The Zora leap joyfully in Lake Hylia. The Gorons dance on Death Mountain. The Triforce of Power has been purified, as much as it can be, and balance has been restored. Their adventure is over.

Link hangs around Zelda like a lovesick dog, and though she thinks maybe Zelda loves her too, there is _Zelda_ and there is _the Princess,_ and the latter is needed almost constantly these days. And the stone floors and the stone ceilings begin to press in on Link.

“Go and visit your family,” Zelda tells her, and Link’s heart drops, for though Zelda will never, ever say so, the Princess doesn’t need her anymore. “Take Epona with you. Tell the Great Fairy everything that’s happened, and - and tell her thank you for me.”

She seems ready to say more, but her eyes grow shadowed, and she just squeezes Link’s hands and lets them drop. Link waits until her back is turned before she bows.

Epona’s speed cannot outrun Link’s tears, but at least it can dash them away.

*

Link loses herself in the forest again, submerging herself in green shadow and dappled sunlight. She forgets speech again, existing in a series of wordless images. Yet for all she will never be an ordinary human, she cannot live as she once did, carefree and thoughtless among the fairies. She’s changed too much, seen too much.

“You’re in love,” the Great Fairy tells her with a sad smile, and Link stares at her helplessly. “You don’t belong to us anymore, my dear one.”

Link will always love the fairies who raised her, but the Great Fairy is right. Her heart is held in the hands of a royal swordswoman.

*

Epona trots into the castle bailey in the early morning, when the light is still silvery with fog. There is a single figure moving across the cobblestones, steady and strong, dancing with a sword in her hands. Link pauses at the gates to watch her, barely noticing the guards moving out of her way.

The figure stops mid-step. “Link? … _Link!_ ”

Link slips down from Epona’s back in time to catch Zelda’s charge, but it still makes her step back from the impact. “I was so sure you wouldn’t come back,” Zelda gasps out, eyes damp. “I was prepared to let you go.”

Link shrugs carefully. “I came back,” she says, the words forming so easily in her mouth.

“I’m - I - ” Zelda clings to Link tightly. “I’ll never hold you. I promise. But - oh, I had all _kinds_ of things I was going to say to you if you ever returned and now I can’t remember a single one of them except _I love you.”_

Link nearly drops her. Zelda laughs helplessly at Link's expression, her eyes as full of love as a fountain is full of water, and Link lets it wash over her, sure now that she’s come home.


End file.
